Quick start

Requirements

A server that stays on, with Docker and Docker Compose
A domain and an HTTPS reverse proxy (Caddy, Nginx, …) — you can skip this to try it locally

1. Download the config

mkdir damail && cd damail
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gopkg-dev/damail/main/docker-compose.yml
curl -o .env https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gopkg-dev/damail/main/.env.example

Edit .env and set at least:

# generate with: openssl rand -hex 32
MASTER_KEY=
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=use-a-strong-password
PUBLIC_URL=https://mail.example.com
# true when served over HTTPS
COOKIE_SECURE=true

2. Start

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

The image is ghcr.io/gopkg-dev/damail (linux/amd64, linux/arm64). Database migrations run on startup. By default it only listens on 127.0.0.1:8787.

3. Reverse proxy

Proxy your domain to http://127.0.0.1:8787 with HTTPS. Turn off response buffering, or live updates and MCP will stall.

Caddy:

mail.example.com {
  reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8787 {
    flush_interval -1
  }
}

Nginx:

location / {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8787;
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
  proxy_buffering off;
  proxy_read_timeout 1h;
}

4. Start using it

Open https://mail.example.com and create the admin account on first visit
Add mailboxes under Settings → Accounts — see Mailboxes
For AI features, add a model under AI → Models — see Models
For agents, create a key under Settings → API keys — see MCP

Backups

Back up the PostgreSQL volume (db-data), the DaMail data volume (app-data, raw messages and attachments) and your .env.